smells rotten, tastes good

Milk. Today, Anita ate old soy milk that smelled like butt. Gross. She didn´t even notice. Salvadorans generally do not drink cold milk, though they sell it at the grocery store. It smells slightly rotten, but tastes good. If you ask for milk at a restaurant, you receive it hot. And if you ask for coffee with milk, the ratio is about 1:4, mostly milk. The milk in Casa Ita is usually powdered. Just add water! I´m personally more comfortable with powdered soy milk than powdered `real´ milk. Last Wednesday at Oti´s house, we drank fresh soy milk that she made herself. This, too, was served hot. New discovery: Chikis and cold milk. When I first arrived in El Salvador, there were three things sitting on my desk to welcome me - a map of El Salvador, a painted wooden pencil holder, and Chikis. Chikis are square shortbread cookies `enrobed´ on one side in either strawberry, chocolate, or vanilla. Vanilla is the only one that tastes good. Anyway, this is the best snack in the world. On Sunday morning, I milked a cow.

There are little things about being here that surprise me. Gum doesn´t last long. It looks chewed before you chew it, melted and stuck inside the paper wrapper. Envelopes seal themselves. But alas! The rainy season has left us and we are at peace with the wind. My clothes dried in less than a day.

Beans and rice are served with everything, even fried chicken and mashed potatoes. I was meant to be here.

There are bigger things, too. Mauricio Funes, FMLN presidential candidate, directly outside our houses in rich, conservative, seemingly gringo-infested Antiguo Cuscatlan. Of course it was rained out. That night, we had to go the long way to get to Kevin and Trena´s to watch the debates, as the road was blocked. Bailey almost lost a shoe in the flood and we had to sacrfice the umbrella to save it. So we arrived soaking wet, but were welcomed by pillows and tea and borrowed clothes. We were even allowed to put our own clothes in the dryer. I forgot what it felt like to put on hot clothes. Beautiful. But the sunshine does wonders, too. Politics can be depressing; shredded bits and pieces of red FMLN flags still hang on the wires outside of Casa Silvia. Salvador, our taxi driver, stood on the corner one day looking up at the flags, and told me how much it hurt him that the rain came.

More: Trash collection is too expensive for many people, so they burn their own trash in the street. As far as I know, emissions regulations are relatively non-existent on the vehicles here, and so this giant disgusting brown cloud hangs weightly over an already depressed atmosphere as of late. It seems that everyone is sick, and it is no wonder. The health care system, too, is a wreck. Sometimes it rains when the sky is blue and cloudless, or so says Anita. There is no explaining this place. And it´s making me very tired. The awkward reaction, I suppose, to things I don´t know how to deal with. Outside, sleepy. Inside, unexpressive, blank, and angry. But I´m getting in touch with it, with all of these feelings, thoughts, inner somethings rising up within me. There are ugly things here: trash. pollution. sickness. poverty. gangs. shitty education sytem. abuse abuse abuse. the absolute impossibility of being able to walk down the sreet without being stared at, shouted at, honked at, kissed at, whistled at, whispered at. memories, stories, images of war. mental, spiritual, physical scars. corrupt governement, puppets of our corrupt government. There are glass shards and barbed wire on the tops of walls, high walls. Bars on every window. We cannot see our neighbors. Where are all the brown people on the billboards? Why do all the fast food restaurants compete for the biggest playpen? Where are the parks? In short, what is it that has been so intricately and subtely constructed so as to oppress people in the most ridiculous, absurdly violent ways? I want to fix it, naturally. During orientation, one of the first things Dean Brackley said to us was, `You can´t fix it.´ So, what then? This is all about my formation? my spiritual growth? my calling? my conscientizacion? my life? Bullshit, right? Maybe not...but sometimes I don´t feel any closer to solidarity. Dorothy Day: `Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.´My time to be afflicted, I guess.

So, the halfway point, I suppose. For a while, the irony was beautiful. And it still is, but it gets harder to see, or appreciate. The list of life-giving, community-inhabiting, profoundly graceful things I have encountered here is overwhelming. Rain and pineapples shaped like suns. A green volcano, the view from our street. Casas abiertas. Singing, laughing, and learning so much. Children, and so many children... But somedays, it all feels like this empty, kitschy, pastel-colored drapery. And then the artist Sabina comes along and slices it down the middle, leaving this gaping wound of reality, fear, pain, suffering, and death. Am I being dramatic? Always a possibility. I am addicted to sad things. Am I a masochist for wanting to cry? Because the thing is, I haven't been able to cry. They sing dirges and I cannot weep. But it's not that I want any of this leftist kitsch, Grand March shit. Because that means two tears - one because you're moved, and the other because you know you're moved. This is the closest I've been to the dark spots, to those earthly bruises, pulsing and swelling with blood, a black and blue pressure that you feel in your chest but travels so slowly to the eyes. So I never cry when I want to. It's always completely unexpected. But I had a good cry the other night. Always brought out by Dad and Mama (by no fault of your own...I just get homesick, and start to wish things for you, and hate that you worry about me with probably twice the heaviness with which I worry about you and I wonder how you bear it...and there's something about hearing your voices that releases something enormous in me and there you have it...our shitty Casa Ita phone didn't help either).

So, it's been different. And heavy. And I've been trudging, feeling slow and locked. And then I think about my passport, and how unfair it is. This is not an exchange program. Already I dread the goodbye, for it will be both good and trying, light and heavy, relieving and painful. But asi es. I am a homebody getting in touch with her need to move. It's always hard for me to say goodbye, to change places, to leave home and come back and leave again. A pervasive nostalgia haunts me wherever I go, and there is always something that I miss. So, still, I am working on presence. And living in this tension, which I'm finding is very much a part of who I am. Neither far away nor close to home for too terribly long. But always with a home.

At night, the streets are empty and dark. Nothing but the artificial light of Casa Ita after 6pm. In Belgium, the sun set at 10pm. I forgot how much I love the night. The freedom to walk around in it, listen to it breathe, waiting patiently for the sun. I think maybe it is the intimacy of night that I love and that keeps me awake. Night is always in suspense, on the edge of something, unsure and buzzing. There are secrets resting here, and also waiting. And so it intrigues me. It's the brightness and noise of the day that lulls me to sleep. Like being at big parties as a child, and suddenly all the lights become blinding and all the voices a monotone murmur and you drown in it. So most of the time, I would rather stay up late and sleep in. But here, the sun rises early, the trash truck rings its obnoxious bell, the tropical birds perch on our windowsill, the showers are cold, and the day greets you with a slap in the face. But I am growing to deeply love the mornings. On Sunday, I awoke before dawn. I watched the day arrive with oil on my hands and the smell of fresh milk and shit. Cow utters are worty and warm. Cow tongues feel like sandpaper. Cow eyes are my favorite.

This past weekend, we were in Esquipulas, Guatemala, visiting what is apparently the Mecca of Central America - Cristo Negro. People from all over Central America, especially the Mayan people of Guatemala, travel here to see the Black Christ, the Christ of their people. Standing in line to pass by this beautifully foreign image of God, the man in front of me tells me that it all depends on how much faith you have. Sure, the wood is just old, blackened from more than 200 years of smoke and acid - but the walls are full of miracles, little silver plaques sent from all over the world thanking God for this and that. I'm not sure. It was like seeing St. Catherine's body in France. I left unmoved, disappointed even, and yet deeply touched. Blank on the inside, but with plently of room to paint. Yes. Plently of room to paint.